Political Quotes

“I want to thank the chairman of the subcommittee for joining me in opposition to this amendment. Shield laws for reporters are not a bad concept at all, but this is hardly the way to go about doing it. No State has a law like this language here, where it is so vague that virtually anyone in the United States claiming to be a journalist or reporter--and, by the way, nowadays, when lots of people maintain blogs or posts on the Internet, they could easily claim to be a journalist or reporter--would be covered by this. So no one intends to have that broad an exception that would allow anyone to evade the requirements that they respond to a legitimate subpoena for investigation by law enforcement, a violation of the law. This is far too broad. It is something that clearly should be handled by the authorizing committee, the Judiciary Committee, which worked on this for a long period of time and has struggled with that very definition of journalist or reporter that the gentleman from Florida simply glosses over in this. And then, to give further exception to simply say that that individual who first claims they are a journalist or reporter and then says, Oh, yeah, that is confidential, that would breed criminal misconduct because criminals would be before the court claiming that they were reporters and that they regarded their information as confidential and, therefore, do not have to respond to a subpoena.…”